Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh was a world-famous Dutch post-Impressionist painter.

He was born at 11 a.m. on March 30, 1853, in the village of Groot-Zundert in the province of North Brabant in the south of the Netherlands, near the Belgian border. Vincent’s father was Theodorus van Gogh, a Protestant pastor, and his mother was Anna Cornelia Carbentus, the daughter of a respected bookbinder and bookseller from The Hague. Vincent was the second of seven children born to Theodorus and Anna Cornelia. He was named after his paternal grandfather, who had also devoted his whole life to the Protestant Church. This name had been intended for the first child of Theodorus and Anna, who was born a year before Vincent and died on the very first day. Thus Vincent, although born second, became the eldest of the children.

Four years after Vincent’s birth, on May 1, 1857, his brother Theodorus van Gogh (Theo) was born. In addition to him, Vincent had a brother, Cor (Cornelis Vincent, May 17, 1867), and three sisters — Anna Cornelia (February 17, 1855), Lies (Elizabeth Huberta, May 16, 1859), and Wil (Willemina Jacoba, March 16, 1862). Family members remembered Vincent as a willful, difficult, and tiresome child with “strange manners,” which was the reason for his frequent punishments. According to the governess, there was something strange about him that set him apart from the other children: of all the children, Vincent was the least pleasant to her, and she did not believe that anything worthwhile could come of him. Outside the family, on the contrary, Vincent showed the opposite side of his character: he was quiet, serious, and thoughtful. He hardly played with other children. In the eyes of the villagers, he was a kind-hearted, friendly, attentive, compassionate, lovable, and modest child. When he was 7, he went to the village school, but a year later he was taken out and, together with his sister Anna, was taught at home by a governess. On October 1, 1864, he went to boarding school in Zevenbergen. Leaving home caused Vincent great distress, and he could